Sadako Yamamura
Sadako Yamamura Sadako Yamamura (山村貞子,Yamamura Sadako[http://ringuseries.wikia.com/wiki/Help:Installing_Japanese_character_sets ?]) is the antagonist in Koji Suzuki's novel Ring and the 1998 film adaptation. In the original novel, Sadako is a hermaphrodite. In both the novels and movies, it is hinted that she is the daughter of some oceanic based entity, making her a quasi-oceanic demigod. Her name combines the Japanese words for "chaste" (sada) and "child" (ko). Most other incarnations share one thing in common: Sadako's need to reproduce, something she cannot do herself, as she is portrayed as an intersexual. This is generally the reason why she creates the "Ring Virus", since she will "live on" in it, as long as her DNA (merged with that of the smallpox virus) still exists. In some incarnations where the "Ring Virus" is just treated as a mysterious phenomenon, and not a biological virus, she generally created it for the purpose of wreaking vengeance on humanity. In the novel, Jotaro Nagao claims that when he raped Sadako (shortly before murdering her), he discovered she had Testicular Feminization Syndrome; despite having the external appearance of a beautiful woman, Sadako was genetically male. The only visible sign of her condition is the fact that she has external testes. When Sadako is reborn in Spiral she has changed, physically; The "new" Sadako has a womb and ovaries. Although Sadako inseminates herself twice in Spiral, she never carries an egg fertilized only by herself to term, and as such it cannot be said how such a pregnancy would operate. The following details are based on her "resurrections". By removing the DNA in one of Sadako's fertilized eggs and replacing it with that of another (then returning the egg to her womb) Sadako can "resurrect" the dead (or potentially clone the living). Her pregnancies, in these cases, last about a week, and the offspring grows back to their age/level of physical development from when the sample was taken in another week. The offspring retain all their memories from when the sample was taken, which Suzuki explains by claiming that memories are stored in the intron of DNA. The movie implies that sometime in her early youth Sadako split into two identical girls — one relatively normal, the other a violent sociopath. This second Sadako is imprisoned by her father and drugged so that she would not physically mature. The second Sadako is never seen clearly, so it's not clear just what her physical state is, only that she has the size and proportions of a child. Both Sadakos possesses psychic powers, although it is never clear whether they are the same. The "normal" Sadako exhibits, at one point, healing powers and the ability to see ghosts. She is also linked to the other Sadako, who wields more destructive powers (such as psychokinesis) and uses them to defend the "normal" Sadako when she is under distress — even if it is her own powers causing said distress. After "normal" Sadako is murdered, the other Sadako merges with her. This merger involves no physical contact, as the child Sadako is locked in a room when it occurs (and vanishes afterwards), and two characters watching over the nearby corpse of older Sadako witnesses only the reanimation of her corpse. The "restored" Sadako is mostly based on the older one, although when provoked her powers surface and her appearance change to resemble her younger form (her face obscured by her hair, moving mostly through shadows, etc.).